Book Review Podcast: Michael Holroyd’s ‘Book of Secrets’

In this Sunday’s Book Review, Toni Bentley reviews  the biographer Michael Holroyd’s latest book, “A Book of Secrets,” which revisits the story of Vita Sackville-West and Violet Keppel, but “with more depth and context than anyone has before.”

Ms. Bentley writes:

    From the first page “A Book of Secrets” casts the spell of a time long gone, of loves endured and lost, expectations dashed on the rocks of reality, of inner desires forever stilled, casting their shadows into history. It is written with the kind of elegance, ease and simplicity possible only from a master craftsman who has flown far beyond any learning curve and is relishing his free fall.

Hollywoollywood Needs to Step Up to the Plate od Needs to Step Up to the Plate

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's firing (August 2, 1981) of approximately 13,000 Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO). The reverberations are still being felt by union members across the country. Prior to the PATCO bust, firing strikers and filling their vacancies with permanent replacements was a fairly risky maneuver, one that had been done sporadically and gingerly. But after PATCO, it became -- if not standard procedure -- a more or less dependable Plan B.

Because the strike of these federal workers was technically illegal, Reagan had the right to fire them. However, the simple act of firing a group of federal union members didn't have to change the national consciousness regarding organized labor, and it certainly didn't have to usher in an era of brutal anti-unionism. But it did. Indeed, since the PATCO smackdown, the American labor movement hasn't been the same.

And the reason it hasn't been the same can be expressed in one deadly, three-syllable word: perception. Perception is everything. The Republicans roll over President Obama because they perceive him as gutless; the so-called Arab Spring occurred because Middle Eastern citizens perceived revolution to be in the air; and when PATCO got dumped, the perception was crystal clear: Labor was now vulnerable.

It's been said that because the U.S., unlike England, doesn't have a king or queen, it looks to movie stars as its royal family, and there's some truth to that wry observation. Americans adore movie stars. But more significantly -- and more potentially useful -- Hollywood is, politically, very liberal. And not just the actors, but also the directors, the writers, the agents and the producers. The movie business is a hotbed of leftist politics (at least in the sense of what passes for "leftist" today).

Although there are many socio-economic truths that cry out for dissemination, four seem most obvious: (1) Trickle-down economics is a hoax. Those who insist that giving tax breaks to the rich will result in jobs are lying. All we're doing by not raising tax rates on the rich is losing trillions in revenue. (2) Today's tax rates are the lowest in 80 years. (3) The middle-class is being eviscerated. And (4) the only institution capable of resisting the crushing downward forces on the wage market is organized labor.

These four facts need to be driven home forcefully and repeatedly. But instead of relying upon the likes of Paul Krugman, Ralph Nader, Lawrence O'Donnell, Keith Olbermann, Robert Reich, Rachel Maddow, et al (who, as accurate and persuasive as they may be, are, alas, often preaching to choir) this information needs to be disseminated by Hollywood -- by people Americans, young and old, idolize -- by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz, George Clooney, Edward Norton, Natalie Portman, Shia LaBeouf, etc.

The top tax-bracket is 35-percent, and that rate doesn't kick in until you earn $379,150. And while every movie star (not actor, but movie star) is in the top bracket, you don't hear them bitching about taxes the way you hear Wall Street bitching. That's because Hollywood is fundamentally leftist; it's also because, after deductions, no one is paying 35-percent. As Robert Reich has aptly noted, the top twenty-five hedge fund managers in 2007 earned a minimum of $1 billion each, but averaged only 17-percent in income tax.

So what's stopping the industry from doing what Matt Damon recently did when he came out publicly in favor of the public teachers union, and people actually listened to him? What's stopping these leftist-liberal-progressive movie stars from flooding the airwaves and spouting the relevant statistics that will put the lie to this evil propaganda?

It could be timidity, it could be fear, it could be apathy, or it could be something as minor as not knowing what the proper forum would be. But it shouldn't be fear that prevents them. After all, people aren't going to stop watching movies because their favorite actors tell them things they resist hearing. People aren't going to boycott Ironman because Robert Downey, Jr. exposes Wall Street for the greedy bastards they are.

President Obama tells us the rich aren't paying enough taxes, Rachel Maddow tells us, Nader tells us, Krugman tells us, and our history books clearly show that tax rates have plummeted, yet the Tea Party continues to attract an audience with its anti-tax rhetoric. Arguably, the only hope of neutralizing this propaganda is to have Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt go on TV and expose the lies. Hollywood needs to step up to the plate.

Taylor Swift: The girl-next-door superstar

By Dan DeLuca

INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC

Count yourself lucky, parents who brought your screaming, deliriously happy daughters to see local-girl-made-good Taylor Swift's Speak Now tour at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday night in South Philadelphia.

Swift, who reminded the crowd of 51,000 early on that "I actually grew up right down the road in Reading, Pa." - though, actually, it was in nearby Wyomissing, in Berks County - is only playing six outdoor football stadium shows on the North American tour named after her 3.5 million copy selling 2010 album.

So if you thought all that ecstatic shrieking was loud when the pop singer-songwriter took to the stage to a recording of Tom Petty's "American Girl" at the start of the 2 hour, 8 outfit production, or when fireworks shot off behind her during the opening "Sparks Fly," or when she floated above the crowd on a suspended-by-wires faux balcony on the fairy tale closer "Love Story" - well, just imagine how loud it would have been if there were a roof on the building.

At 21, the always precocious Swift is already a practiced show woman. And she comes by her enormous appeal to young girls naturally.

On the one hand, she's the glamorous, nearly 6-foot tall porcelain-skinned country-pop princess. On the other, she's a gangly, barely out of her teens, semi-awkward girl next door, who made no vocal flubs on Saturday, but is by no means a flawless powerhouse vocalist. Her strength, instead, is bonding with her audience by turning heart-on-sleeve diary entries into super-catchy pop songs that display a schooled-by-country sense of craftsmanship but never feel like they come off the assembly line.

At the Linc, Swift put on a show that was padded with too many watch-the-dancers-while-I-put-on-another-dress interludes. And it started to drag during the pre-encore stretch, with the rather lumbering "Haunted," and a "Dear John" (that's the expert John Mayer take-down) that was marred by inappropriate fireworks explosion that spoiled the intimacy of the moment.

But otherwise, it was pretty much an "Enchanted" evening (to borrow a Speak Now song title). Swift seemed genuinely moved and showed skill at milking the affections of the crowd in "the place I'm from," where she remembered playing "festivals and fairs, coffeehouses and karaoke contests."

Every night on the Speak Now tour, Swift scrawls a song lyric down the length of her left arm. On this night it came from Elton John: "'Cause I live and breathe this Philadelphia Freedom."

At the start, she recalled her father watching Eagles games on TV when she was growing up. For the first encore,"Fifteen," she and her entire band - whom she praised lavishly but never introduced by name - donned team jerseys.

Midset, she walked through the crowd to the back of the floor, where she played ukulele in a purple dress while sitting under a silver fairy tree that spun like a wind-up music box.

There she did "Fearless," with a bit of Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" thrown in, and her own "Last Kiss." And she also cannily added a couple of Philadelphia connected tunes to the program, in Pink's "Who Knew," and "Unpretty," by TLC, the 1990's R & B hitmakers that featured the late Philadelphia rapper Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes.

There was one country-flavored segment, during which Swift, who also played guitar and piano, wore pigtails and flecked a banjo. That was when she did "Mean," the anti-bullying anthem from Speak Now. It's not one of her best songs, but reinforces the idea that Swift is the nicest of nice girls in an often profane and nasty over-sexualized pop landscape.

That may well be true, but the compelling thing about "Mean," and much of Speak Now, is that it's not as nicey nice as you might think. When she decides to hit back, like when, at the Linc, she called the "Mean" bully "a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life" or when she shook her stuff in a red mini-dress in "Better Than Revenge" and targeted a boyfriend-stealing actress "better known for the things she does on a mattress," she can be quite nasty. And that bodes well for her as well as her screaming school girl fans as they mature together in a mean, grown up world.

MapleStory creator Nexon invests in 6waves Lolapps

The newly formed 6waves Lolapps is already making a big splash in the social gaming space, despite only recently joining forces. According to a report from VentureBeat, the new company will receive investment from none other than MapleStory developer Nexon.

Though the Korea-based Nexon is best known for the browser-based MMO MapleStory, the company recently expanded to Facebook with the launch of MapleStory Adventures. By teaming up with an established company like 6waves Lolapps, which currently boasts a monthly active usersbase of around 35 million, Nexon is clearly attemtping to expand its Facebook presence.

"We are thrilled to be teaming up with 6waves Lolapps in such a significant way," Nexon CEO Seung-woo Choi told VentureBeat. "By joining forces, we are combining 6waves Lolapps’ experience in publishing and developing social games with our extensive knowledge of free-to-play games and the microtransaction business model."

Details of the investment have not yet been disclosed.

The next big game to come out of 6waves Lolapps is Ravenshire Castle, the sequel to the hit Facebook game Ravenwood Fa